Update on the Black Hills “BLH” headstamped brass for .300 Blackout… Unfortunately, it sounds like the BLH brass which had previously been used to fill the Dutch special forces contract, and which was used in some promo photos & setups for SHOT show 2019, will not be getting out into retail distribution much if at all.

I have been looking for / waiting for the new 110gr TSX load by Black Hills in this caliber to show up for sale anywhere so that I could get this new headstamp, and I finally today saw that Selway Armory had some in stock. I emailed Selway to ask what the headstamp was, and they surprisingly informed me that it was “LC 19”. I found it strange that anyone would still be bothering with reformed 5.56 brass (especially perfectionist Black Hills), and so I called Black Hills to ask. They told me that the BLH headstamp is all but gone, and only perhaps a small amount made it out into the retail distribution stream - who knows where. He said that the Lake City headstamp reported by Selway is accurate, and he said that in fact, LC (MAST?) is now manufacturing dedicated .300 Blackout, and that it is not trimmed / resized 5.56. He said they are headstamping everything with date / manufacturer only, hence the anemic “LC 19” headstamp for a .300 Blackout case. I knew that MAST is / was producing .300 BLK brass, but with the MAST headstamp, and so to now use an LC headstamp, without also stamping it with “.300 BLK” would seem to serve only to confuse Blackout connoisseurs since they always equate LC headstamps with reformed 5.56…?

I found this odd since LC is also doing some 5.56 loads for Frontier (Hornady) as well as Norma USA these days, and those cases both have the caliber marking on the headstamp, no date, and feature the contracted buyer, not the “manufacturer”… oh well. I could only guess that LC had a whole bunch of generic LC 19 marked 5.56 brass which they needed to do something with, and they have a trimming / sizing machine to quickly churn out “factory” .300 BLK brass? Seems odd that LC would be suddenly delving into the saturated .300 BLK brass market, and that they would be marking the cases only with LC and a date code?

I think 300 Blackout is more profitable then 5.56 NATO and in demand vs. 5.56 NATO ?
althought I stocked up on S&B 200 gr. Sub-sonic at $10.00 a box of 20.
So I may be wrong.
I wish they would make 6.5 Grendel Brass and ammo cheap, that is way to high.

Here is the new headstamp from Herters via Cabela’s. They seem to be doing the star-USA-star headstamp on all of their Herters ammo now that they have restyled the packaging and the brand (making it sound more domestic). I had shown the 9mm and .45acp version of this headstamp before, and below are the .38spl and 12ga as well.

Fede - thanks for the info on the Brazilian “O” primer. Odd that they don’t seem to use it on military/police contract 9 mm ammo. I have some fairly recent headstamps from CBC in that area, and I don’t recall any of them using an “O” on the primer. Does it apply to pistol primers, or simply to rifle primers?

So now we have RWS/GECO, Remington-UMC and CBC using that primer marking at one time of another, all with different meanings. Well, guess there are only so many ways you can mark a primer. It is a study in itself - primer markings, that is.

Fede - thank you. As an auto pistol cartridge collector, I know the “O” primers primarily from 7.65 mm Luger (.30 Luger) blanks made up by outfits like Stembridge Arms, for movie use in Lugers. Not all the Luger pistols seen in movies were 9 mm, although they probably were meant to represent 9 mm pistols (war movies, especially).